Intuitive journeys across unknown landscapes
The term ‘wayfinding’ is used to describe the processes people go through to help them navigate new environments. It is often qualified as a problem solving process. But, successful wayfinding solutions should make navigation both a comfortable and intuitive process.
With all journeys beyond a known environment, there are a series of decisions to be made:
- Firstly is the consideration to make the actual journey – driven by pleasure, necessity or even both.
- The second is to qualify how you are going to get there – car, bus, taxi, walk.
- The third is which route you will take – road, rail, path or a combination.
The subsequent decisions are based on a variety of factors relating to the person making the journey – the environment they journey through and the information they have. All wayfinding decisions are influenced by previous decisions. So what appears to be a simple process is complex and interrelated.
This actions are all engaged before we have even tried to navigate digital mapping, signage, language etc etc… To be discussed in detail in a future journal post.
Even with all this in place one factor often forgotten by sign designers and wayfinding companies is the emotional state of the person who is actually being directed. A trip to the cinema is very different to a visit to an A&E department – both emotionally charged, but at either end of the emotional spectrum. And the complexity of the task – one with a simple focus on collecting a ticket, snacks and locating a seat in ‘screen two’, whilst the other parking, paying for parking and locating the entrance to the A&E department by foot whilst not passing out or drawing attention to your predicament. Try navigating either if the signage isn’t in your native language, or you are agoraphobic?
Contemporary wayfinding will address the new ‘access’ regulations, be legible in colours of high contrast. It also acts as a signifier to the brand of a space.
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Navigating the Micro / Macro Landscape
In 1952 David Kindersley (a type designer / letter cutter based in Cambridge) submitted ‘MOT Serif’ to the British Ministry of Transport. At that time it was in the process of developing a new signage system to be rolled out across the UK’s evolving road network. The Road Research Laboratory found Kindersley’s design a legible option, but eventually elected to choose ‘Transport’ as the successful candidate.
Transport – a bold sans-serif typeface (by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert) designed in both upper and lower-case letters was the first time a mixed case lettering would be used on British road signs. Up until this point road signage had adopted capital wording only.
The designs for the new motorway signage were published for the first time in The Times in 1958. The Anderson Committee managed the process – a governmental body set up to create new standard signage for the coming network of British motorways. The committee had employed Kinneir and Calvert off the back of Anderson’s admiration for Kinneir’s work re-signing Gatwick Airport and creation of a luggage labelling system for ocean liner operator P&O.
The adoption of the Transport typeface provoked a backlash from more traditionalist designers (led by Kindersley). Over the next few years, as the Transport driven signing system was adopted, Kindersley and his supporters maintained a media battle, promoting an alternative design for signage. This featured all-capital wording, set in a serif typeface based on one that Kindersley had earlier designed for the Ministry of Transport for use on street names. He had originally wanted this serif typeface to be the single standard for road name signs and so did the Ministry, but the Royal Fine Arts Commission disagreed. Finally the Ministry of Transport concluded that Kindersley’s serif typeface would be a viable option for street name signs, and Kindersley was commissioned to refine the typeface for use.
Kindersley’s approach to type design was rooted in history – arts and craft inspired, majestic serif letter forms. Although rejected for the wider signage project (totally unsuited for the ‘modern’ evolution of the road network system) its adoption for street signage throughout Cambridge helps reverberate a landscape steeped in history – it functions to to underpin Cambridge’s historic identity and helps to reinforce the brand of place.
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© Carl Middleton – July 2026.
Its’s not just about good typography – effective design raises wider questions about environment, user and message. Effective signage provides a comfort – knowing where you are and where you are going is very important.
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Further reference
- David Kindersley – Optical Letter Spacing for New Printing Systems (Wynkyn de Worde Society / Lund Humphries – 1976)
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